Is There a “Star System” for Crime Victims?

For every Chandra Levy, Laci Peterson, Elizabeth Smart or Natalee Holloway, there are dozens more victims whose cases go ignored by the media. Bridget Johnson asks if some lives - those of the cute, white, female, wealthy and preferably blond - are worth more than others.

Otherwise, if history is any indicator, you may wait a while for the outpouring of media attention that could result in the crucial tip to crack the case — meaning either finding your child alive or, at least, nabbing the perpetrators of a kidnapping or murder.

Last week, the media went ape over the latest arrests of Joran van der Sloot and brothers Satish and Deepak Kalpoe in the 2 1/2-year-old Aruba disappearance of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway. The case has long been a favorite of cable news, often swallowing up hour-long programs with speculation, expert analysis and the occasional witness account.

And lately, media personalities have been obsessed about the case of Illinois missing wife Stacy Peterson, a story peppered with bizarre quips from her four-times-married police sergeant husband and the exhumation of his mysteriously deceased third wife.

Both cases have everything the media have come to love: Trouble befalling the girl next door, the thrill of digging up the dirty little secrets of Scott Peterson-type characters, and victims who happen to resemble the other victims who’ve received primo coverage over the years.

And then there’s Latasha Norman.

Latasha, a 20-year-old honor student working at an arts and crafts store to pay her way through Jackson State University, was last seen Nov. 13 in an afternoon class. She never made it back to her dorm. Her car, which previously had been the target of tire-slashing, remained on campus.

Latasha is African-American, a churchgoing girl from the Mississippi Delta. “We were just praying that we would wake up today and God would give us some new information,” Norman’s father, Danny Bolden, said on Thanksgiving. “But the day’s not over yet.”

Frustrated by the lack of national media coverage in the case, Jackson Police Chief Malcolm McMillin, who is white, said what one can’t help but think: “As far as the interest by the national media in the story, I think race probably had an impact. … It’s the daughter of simple people who maybe are not important outside of their circle, and maybe we don’t attach the same importance to them that we do for other people.”

After the chief’s comments, McMillin and Bolden finally got a chance to speak on MSNBC. Media guilt only lasts so long, though, and Latasha’s case has taken a back seat again.

For every Chandra Levy, Laci Peterson, Elizabeth Smart or Jon-Benet Ramsey, there are dozens more missing or murdered women and men whose cases deserve the same valuable spotlight. People such as John Walsh have helped fill this information void with programs like “America’s Most Wanted,” but we still have to ask why the case of missing Madeleine McCann gets splashy daily coverage in the British papers while a quick search of a UK missing children Web site reveals so many names and faces — many Arab or Indian — that we’ve never seen in print.

Are the media on the constant hunt for the next Lindbergh baby, that sensational case that they believe best captures public sympathy and stirs maximum outrage? Do the media jump toward the victim with the top connections, the best-oiled P.R. machine?

Or is selective media coverage of missing and murdered women a vestige of institutional racism that also discriminates on socioeconomic standing?

It’s a disturbing question, but cases like Latasha’s make the query too important to ignore. Consciously or subconsciously, the media are playing favorites on crime stories, and poor or minority victims of foul play pay the price as fewer people even know about the case in order to provide that crucial tip to law enforcement.

How does this come across to the public? That some lives are worth more than others. But in the media world, it’s a matter of some lives being more newsworthy than others — and those decision-makers, as well as media outlets that hop on the bandwagon of single-case saturation, have their priorities and judgment horribly skewed.

News holes in print are constantly shrinking as revenues slide, and there are only so many hours for cable news to rehash the events of the day.

But here’s a thought: What if one Britney Spears story was nixed to make way for the Latashas of the world?

Bridget Johnson is a columnist at the Los Angeles Daily News.

Bridget Johnson is a veteran journalist whose news articles and opinion columns have run in dozens of news outlets across the globe. Bridget first came to Washington to be online editor at The Hill, where she wrote The World from The Hill column on foreign policy. Previously she was an opinion writer and editorial board member at the Rocky Mountain News and nation/world news columnist at the Los Angeles Daily News.
She is an NPR contributor and has contributed to USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, National Review Online, Politico and more, and has myriad television and radio credits as a commentator. Bridget is Washington Editor for PJ Media.

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1.
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I suspect that the author feels safe behind a shield of self-righteous political correctness when she makes her ‘blame the white guy first’ accusations. Well, screw political correctness.

Could it be a bubble-up from the sub-cultures themselves?

After all, in rap/hip-hop culture women are nothing more than bitches and ho’s to be used up and discarded. Islam reaches entirely new levels of outrageous misogyny. How about Chinese valuation of girls?

Traditional western culture on the other hand has long held up the concept of a defense of woman’s honor and chivalry as an ideal. Though many feminists have been working very, very hard for decades at discrediting and destroying the value system and the concept of being duty-bound to protect those physically weaker than ourselves, its roots have grown very deep over the past several centuries and the concept isn’t dead yet.

One hypothesis might be that this is the by-product of assaulting, mocking, and rejecting Western (i.e. ‘white’) values play role in what the author perceives? Perhaps assertive multi-culturalism (the inherent contradiction of ‘we’re really all the same but we’re really all different’) is producing a balkanization – for all the superficial posturing to the contrary. Perhaps multi-culturalism’s inherent contradiction of ‘we’re really all the same but we’re really all different’ ultimately reinforces the idea that ‘They aren’t one of us nor do they want to be’. Every time a Jesse Jackson or an Al Shartpon gets in front of a camera, that’s the message I receive from these bozos tribalists. Why does the media champion these bozos instead of the Thomas Sowells?

So, I applaud the Christianity inspired Western values for honoring, standing up, and defending women. It’s very unfashionable, I know – but more groups might want to give it a try before they demand others do it for them.

I am disgusted that I even know the names of Natalie Holloway and Lacy Peterson.

I think the media focuses on these types of stories because of the cute rich white girl angle, which gets high ratings, but also if they focused on black crime victims, they would find themselves focusing on black criminals-a big no no for the PC crowd. This is also why Matt Shepard got all the coverage and a TV movie, while Jesse Dirkhising (kidnapped, raped, died choking on his own underwear while being raped) got nothing, and why the white couple raped, tortured, murdered and burned by blacks got almost no coverage. The media has a plan: Show gays as victims, don’t show blacks as victims unless the perpetrator is white, and focus on white criminals.

Latasha Norman is not white, blue eyed, and blond. This is most assuredly the number one reason why she is being ignored by the MSM. Yes, subconscious racism likely explains everything. It is foolish to deny the obvious.

This article fails to mention missing men. Missing males only make the media when they are under the age of 13 or they are very, very rich?

I think giving up media space used for folks like Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and many others is the best idea I’ve heard. We don’t want or need to know what color their underwear is. And maybe sharing stories about missing people and their families, who could use our support would have a positive effect on some of the selfish behavior so prevalant in our society today.

I’m hoping LaTasha is getting local coverage. It sounds like what ever happened, happened close to home. And then secondly, I’m hoping someone close to her continues to contact media outlets – ALL of them.

Scour the web for sites like Nancy Grace on Fox, Oprah, Montel Williams has done some spots on the missing. Write your own articles and submit them… Be persistent and keep pushing.